IMPORTANT TESTIMONY OF A RUNAWAY SLAVE LEADING HIS WIFE, SEVEN CHILDREN, AND 14 SELF-EMANCIPATED SLAVES TO FREEDOM VIA THE USS SOMERSET IN THE UNION BLOCKADE

Manuscript document. Franklin County, Florida, n.d.. 2 pages, legal folio, in pencil.

A historically significant statement by John S. Collins, a former slave, who testifies that he led 22 escaped slaves, including his wife and seven children, to freedom via Union ships blockading the Gulf Coast of Florida during the Civil War. 

Remarkably, Collins makes his statement at the behest of his former owner George Sinclair (1841-ca 1872), an avowed Union Man, who was seeking compensation from the Federal Government for his lost "property." Sinclair is listed in the 1850 Federal slave schedule as owning 13 individuals, and by 1860, the number had swelled to 34. 

The document reads, in part: "This is to certify that I have examined the receipt of A.F. Grosman Lieut Commander to George Sinclair for twenty two fugitives, which is here unto attached and known from my own personal knowledge that all the names on the receipt did belong to George Sinclair. And further state that the 14th person named is my wife and the same following names is our children, Rachel belonged to Sinclair when I married her, We are now living in Apalachicola. I made all the arrangements to have them and others taken to the U.S. Steamer Summersett [sic]. I further state that this receipt does not contain one-half of the names of the slaves that Geo. Sinclair owned in his own right and title. Some of them went to the Blockaders before I did, others soon after, only a few remained with him." 

The U.S.S. Somerset entered service in the East Gulf Blockading Squadron in the spring of 1862. After early service off the coast of Cuba, she cruised the Florida coast between Cedar Key and Apalachicola Bay beginning during the summer of 1862 and continuing throughout the war. 

Tantalizingly, a letter by Sherman Adams (1832-1901), an acting assistant paymaster in the U.S. Navy, drafted from aboard the USS Somerset on 12 December 1863, while in Apalachicola Bay, records: "On my muster [rolls] are borne the names of about fifty 'contrabands' who having been received on board, were shipped in the Naval Service. They generally perform the duties of landsmen and Coal Passers, as well as the white men would perform them. Of lesser duties, such as making soundings, setting stakes and buoys we have performed a great number." (Connecticut Historical Society)

Though undated, Sinclair almost certainly made his petition for compensation before the Emancipation Proclamation, which made any claims for runaway slaves moot. Perhaps he was inspired by the 1862 D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act, which paid slaveonwers loyal to the Union $300 per person to free their slaves. Although this act only covered slaveowners who were residents of Washington, D.C., perhaps Sinclair felt the door was open for his own claim. Even if the claim was made ambitiously after the Emancipation Proclamation, Sinclair had died by 1872, placing the latest possible date within early Reconstruction. 

[African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation] [Civil War, Union, Confederate]  [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs]